Category: Home working

Having the ambition to work for yourself shows an excellent attitude and one that it likely to succeed. To harness that ambition before it goes stale, it’s important to define business goals to keep you on track. But what happens when you don’t achieve your goal? How do you stay motivated and moving in the right direction?

If this happens to you, it’s important to stay strong, turn negatives into positives and find opportunities for improvement. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team:

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Awareness days, holidays and promotional days all present great marketing opportunities. You can join in with hashtags on social media, or leverage the enthusiasm generated by Google’s doodles. Offline, you can take advantage of the general holiday atmosphere and market your business in line with Christmas or Halloween.

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One quarter of the year is a long enough period time for you to notice trends, but not so long that patterns become irrelevant. As we change from Q3 to Q4, it’s a good time to review the last quarter, measure the success and take on learning points for the coming quarter.

In this blog, we look at the four questions business owners should be asking during a quarterly review.

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If you’re new to running a small business, you’re not naturally organised, or you just hate finance jobs, it can be easy for your accounts to get on top of you. Of course, it’s much better if you can get on top of them. The best way to do this is to break your accounting tasks down into regular responsibilities. In this blog, we look at what you should be doing daily, weekly, monthly and annually so you can keep up to date with your finances.

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Happy birthday to us! Get Ahead turns eleven this autumn and we are so proud of how far we’ve come. Of course, we don’t just want to keep our success to ourselves.

Here’s what we’ve learned in the last eleven years – we hope our experience will help you too!

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If you’ve just set up your business, or you’re offering a new service, it can be difficult to know how to price your offering. You don’t want to rip off your customers…but you don’t want to rip yourself off either. Working out what to charge for services can be very complex, so we’ve put together some do’s and don’ts to point you in the right direction.

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Many businesses have welcomed apps like Xero and Quickbooks. They have definitely made life easier, and empowered entrepreneurs to manage their own finances. Xero is certainly making life easier for the Get Ahead regional directors! But how far can you go with finance software? When do you need to hand over to an accountant?

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Tell anyone who knows Fiona Ibbetson that she’s just won a major industry award, and their reaction is likely to be “Well, of course she would. Obvs”.

And it’s easy to understand why. The owner of Get Ahead in Leeds and Wakefield made her business profitable in the first three months, created work for 22 people, and expects to triple her revenue this year.

She’s also taking on the additional territory of York and Harrogate which will generate work for many more people as well as making life easier for the business owners she serves by providing outsourced virtual assistants.

“I’d not had my own business before this,” says Fiona, who’d worked for Morrisons supermarkets for 20 years. “That’s why I went down the franchise route.

“The franchise model offers flexibility and leverages the skills of my team to help local businesses. That’s my passion.

“I’ve grown the business really well during the pandemic, despite losing three clients which halved my revenue overnight.

“I’ve had a great mentor in the franchisor, plus I use two business coaches, one for my personal brand.

“I thought networking would be a completely new skill to learn until I realised I’d been networking naturally with peers and colleagues for years.

“My husband’s still working from home as well, and I’m working on my business around my family as well as home-schooling two children. Everybody’s had to adapt.”

Despite the face-to-face networks she relied on for new business vanishing overnight in the pandemic, Fiona built the business up to a team of six plus 16 virtual assistants, and she’s taking on a Business Development Manager to help with the new territory.

“Winning the award is amazing,” she says. “I’m thrilled to be recognised and it puts me up there with other great franchisees which is fantastic.”

The Great British Franchisee Awards recognise franchisees’ exceptional performance and business experience, ability to drive business growth, staff retention, customer satisfaction, community involvement, inspired leadership, and franchise involvement.

The awards are run by whichfranchise, supported by Lloyds Bank, BDO, AMO Consulting and Chantry Group.

• Read more about the awards at https://www.whichfranchise.com/awards

• For over 25 years, whichfranchise has promoted ethical franchise opportunities in the UK. Learn more at https://www.whichfranchise.com/

Tell anyone who knows Fiona Ibbetson that she’s just won a major industry award, and their reaction is likely to be “Well, of course she would. Obvs”.

And it’s easy to understand why. The owner of Get Ahead in Leeds and Wakefield made her business profitable in the first three months, created work for 22 people, and expects to triple her revenue this year.

She’s also taking on the additional territory of York and Harrogate which will generate work for many more people as well as making life easier for the business owners she serves by providing outsourced virtual assistants.

“I’d not had my own business before this,” says Fiona, who’d worked for Morrisons supermarkets for 20 years. “That’s why I went down the franchise route.

“The franchise model offers flexibility and leverages the skills of my team to help local businesses. That’s my passion.

“I’ve grown the business really well during the pandemic, despite losing three clients which halved my revenue overnight.

“I’ve had a great mentor in the franchisor, plus I use two business coaches, one for my personal brand.

“I thought networking would be a completely new skill to learn until I realised I’d been networking naturally with peers and colleagues for years.

“My husband’s still working from home as well, and I’m working on my business around my family as well as home-schooling two children. Everybody’s had to adapt.”

Despite the face-to-face networks she relied on for new business vanishing overnight in the pandemic, Fiona built the business up to a team of six plus 16 virtual assistants, and she’s taking on a Business Development Manager to help with the new territory.

“Winning the award is amazing,” she says. “I’m thrilled to be recognised and it puts me up there with other great franchisees which is fantastic.”

The Great British Franchisee Awards recognise franchisees’ exceptional performance and business experience, ability to drive business growth, staff retention, customer satisfaction, community involvement, inspired leadership, and franchise involvement.

The awards are run by whichfranchise, supported by Lloyds Bank, BDO, AMO Consulting and Chantry Group.

• Read more about the awards at https://www.whichfranchise.com/awards

• For over 25 years, whichfranchise has promoted ethical franchise opportunities in the UK. Learn more at https://www.whichfranchise.com/

We are great believers in outsourcing, but how do you get from knowing you need to outsource something, to actually having someone else complete that task for you? How does the outsourcing process work?

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